Cell-mate given six-hour beating

A VIOLENT young prisoner will spend an additional 20 months inside after subjecting his new cell-mate to a sadistic six-hour beating.

Ben Harris, 20, was already serving a year-long sentence for wounding at Reading Young Offenders’ Institution when he launched the attack on June 19, Reading Crown Court heard on Monday.

Victim Tom Washington was punched, kicked, beaten with a piece of furniture, had a cigarette stubbed out on his face and his cheek slashed with a plastic knife during the ordeal. His watch was also stolen.

Harris made the other man tell him “that he loved the defendant’s gran and that (Harris) was the king of the cell”, prosecutor Jane Davies said.

“He called the aggrieved fat and said he was his punchbag – he made comments that he didn’t think Mr Washington’s nose would bleed and then punched him in the nose until it did,” she added.

She said Mr Washington moved into the cell just half an hour before the attack began and said Harris told him he was unhappy that his previous cell-mate had been moved out.

The attack only stopped when Harris went to sleep – and the next morning he threatened his victim with reprisals unless he lied to explain his injuries.

Although there was a panic button in the cell, the victim was too scared to push it, she added.

Harris had pleaded guilty to robbery at an earlier hearing Charles Thomas, defending, said there was nothing he could say to excuse the attack, but said his client was becoming so used to prison that the authorities would face difficulties re-introducing him to society.

Judge Mary Jane Mowat said it had been a “beastly and sadistic” attack and that Harris was a danger to the public. “I think you are proud of what you did – you seem to think this is the way to get on in life,” she told him.

Harris had been due for release from his previous wounding sentence next March, but will now not be eligible for parole until May 2008 at the earliest.